Mining Booms and Busts

I was walking down the sidewalk the other day when I came across
a little boy digging in the lawn beside me. I asked the little boy
what he was digging for, and he replied to me that he was searching
for treasure.

I
asked him if he had ever heard the saying, “if you dig deep enough
into the earth, you will end up in China”?

That would be a lot of digging, considering it would mean that
you would have to dig all the way through the earth and come out on
the other side.

This got me thinking. What I would like to know is what do you
find when you dig deep into the earth’s surface? Do you find
different things in different locations? If I dig in South Dakota
and Florida, will I find the same things buried below our feet?

Even if we wanted to find out what was beneath us, how would we
do it? Do you think that there are machines big enough to do the
job? If we dug everywhere we thought there might be something
valuable, don’t you think we would be surrounded by holes?

What about in the past when people dug, what happened to all of
those places? These are just a few questions that came racing
through my mind as I watched the little boy dig for his treasure. I
continued on my way down the sidewalk, and later, this is what I
found out…